I've been in Korea for almost three months now. Still very happy to be here. I've organized this post into different sections, and have uploaded some more pictures at the bottom. As I've mentioned, I try to include relatively interesting stuff rather than just the day-to-day things. If anyone has any questions about anything feel free to comment here or email me. I'm always available to Skype as well. I'm still having trouble with getting notifications from comments, so I may not respond immediately. Enjoy!
Random observations
-Words and letters on people’s clothing are almost always in English, rather than Hangul (“hahn-geul”- the Korean alphabet). This would be like most Americans wearing shirts with Chinese characters and symbols. I often wonder if Korean people know what the words on their shirts even mean. Some of my observations indicate that this is a clear “no”. For example, I’ve seen a third grade student wear a “I <3 BEER” shirt (for you older folk, <3 is a heart. Tilt your head sideways.) as well as other young people wearing shirts with obvious drug references or curse words.
-Fast food places such as McDonalds and Burger King do delivery. I imagine this must be the reverse of going through a drive through, where they give you your fast food through your window.
-In many restaurants, the tables have a button you can press to call over the waiter/waitress if you need something. You can press this button any number of times, and every time the servers will always be just as fast, helpful and kind as the previous button press. I really wish the states were like this.
-To this day, not a single Korean person has pronounced my name correctly. Literally no one. Usually, my name is pronounced “Anj-roo”. Korean people have trouble pronouncing the “dr” combination though. Instead, they pronounce both a “d” sound and an “r” sound in succession, as opposed to more of a “j” sound. The result: I’m constantly referred to as “An-duh-roo”.
-Professional video gaming is huge here in Korea. The best teams/players are celebrities and known by many young people. Just like any other popular sport in the states, you can watch professional e-gaming on national television and thousands of people will go to watch teams compete. League of Legends is currently the most popular game (played on the computer) and the 2014 championship awarded one million dollars to the winning team of four players. If you go to any city in Korea (even as small as Mokpo) you will find “PC Bangs” all over the place. These are places where many young people gather to play their favorite online games. Video game addiction is a real problem, and there are curfews in place to prevent young people from playing video games at certain times.
-Not many Korean people know how to swim. For the ones that do know how to “swim” though, there is a catch: they have no idea what treading water is or how to do it! When I ask Koreans about this, some people simply don’t include treading water in the definition of swimming while others literally have no clue what it means to keep yourself afloat when your feet can’t touch the bottom. The reason for this is that hardly any swimming pools in Korea have a deep end- any Koreans that learned how to swim learned to do so in shallow water! When people go to the beach, they rarely go into deep water, and if they do, they’re always in floating tubes.
-There are hardly any houses here- pretty much everyone lives in an apartment (quality varies).
-There is a slightly noticeable haze of air pollution in most cities in Korea. Nothing too detrimental to one's health though. Mokpo's air is obviously cleaner than Seoul's due to the size of the city. Apparently the pollution can be worst during springtime when the "yellow dust" blows in from China (many cities in China have extremely hazardous air pollution). At that point I've heard it's good to invest in a decent breathing mask. I think we take clean air for granted in the states.
Appearance-based culture
-Some of the most famous people in Korea are Korean pop stars (K-pop stars). These are not like celebrities in the states though. Many are multi-talented. They sing, dance, act- you name it. The K-pop industry is composed of mostly groups of all-male or all-female singers (like the Backstreet Boys or Spice Girls). In the US, celebrities tend to be more specialized to only singing or only acting, and there are more individual celebrities rather than celebrity groups. The scariest part? These pop stars are practically created by the companies that financially own them. They are sought out at a very young age (pre-teen or early teen) and are trained intensively for years until they debut anywhere from age 17-22. All of them will get numerous plastic surgery operations throughout their careers in order to fit the Korean beauty standard- it’s simply a necessity if a group wants any chance at hitting it big. If you look at before and after pictures of these stars, you’ll see what I mean. Some of these people have completely transformed their faces. Side note: when people go to plastic surgery clinics, instead of saying something like “I want larger eyes” or “I want a smaller nose”, people say things like “I want to look like Yoona”, “I want Taeyang’s nose”, or “I want Suzy’s eyes” (these are all famous kpop stars). You simply flip through a catalog and pick out what you want to look like. Also, it is not uncommon for parents to pay for their child’s plastic surgery as part of a high school graduation present.
-Many people here know their blood type, and my fourth grade students were amazed when I didn’t know mine. Similar to a horoscope, there are beliefs that certain blood types have certain personalities.
-Some Korean women use brown or darker colored makeup “pencils” to thicken their eyebrows- they actually draw over their eyebrows in an attempt to make them appear to be more full of hair or longer. Korean women don’t have thick eyebrows to begin with, so it can sometimes look like a person took a crayon to their face and just decided to draw eyebrows. Kinda bizarre if you ask me.
-In the US, we tend to value having tan skin. Here, white and fair skin is valued. Tan is considered bad/dirty, and many Korean people will go to great lengths to whiten their skin if it is tan (many are naturally tan) as well as get spots/freckles removed from the face. It is not uncommon to see people practically wearing what I call a “makeup face mask”- as in their face is covered in white-ish makeup but the rest of their skin is just their natural color- thus creating a two tone look between the face and neck which looks a little ridiculous in my opinion. In relation to this, people will often wear hats, jackets, pants, face masks, sun umbrellas, or even hold up a piece of paper- all to protect their skin from damage from the sun (regardless of temperature, of course).
-Apparently Korean people do not have long eyelashes compared to foreigners. Somewhere out there in cyberspace there is a video of a pack of third grade girls marveling at the length of my eyelashes.
-I'm not going to lie- appearances here play a major role in how a person is treated and viewed in Korean society. I still receive comments almost every day about my appearance. I've also heard that status plays a major role as well (slightly tougher for me to observe since I'm a foreigner). Do I think this emphasis on status and appearance is a good thing? Of course not- but I definitely do not look down on Korean culture because of this nor do I let this bring down my experience here. I want to appreciate my time here as much as possible, have fun, learn, and be grateful for where I am and what I'm doing.
Safety
-Korea is an extremely safe country, much more so than the US. Here, a girl can walk around pretty much anywhere at any time of night and not feel the slightest worry of being in danger- whether in a city or smaller town. Crime here is very low and there is a level of trust between strangers that people will act in a moral way. People leave their cars running all the time (with nobody in the car), leave mopeds running on the sidewalk, leave bikes unlocked, and if you leave your wallet or phone somewhere in a public place, there’s a good chance it will still be there the next day.
-Hardly any of the police officers have guns and there is a much lower police presence here than in the states. As I’ve said before, this country is about harmony and not creating disruption- people here are generally better behaved than Americans.
Education
Lots to say about the education system in Korea. I'll save this for the next blog post as I haven't really organized any of my thoughts on this yet. It will surely provide for an interesting read though.
Overall
If you've made it this far, thanks for reading. I probably won't post again for at least another month- maybe longer, I don't know. I think my next post will be more a little more personal rather than simply talking about initial cultural observations, differences, etc. I'll try to make it as interesting and valuable to the readers as possible. Thank you to my friends, family, and anyone who has helped me in life. I love you all.
Andrew
Random observations
-Words and letters on people’s clothing are almost always in English, rather than Hangul (“hahn-geul”- the Korean alphabet). This would be like most Americans wearing shirts with Chinese characters and symbols. I often wonder if Korean people know what the words on their shirts even mean. Some of my observations indicate that this is a clear “no”. For example, I’ve seen a third grade student wear a “I <3 BEER” shirt (for you older folk, <3 is a heart. Tilt your head sideways.) as well as other young people wearing shirts with obvious drug references or curse words.
-Fast food places such as McDonalds and Burger King do delivery. I imagine this must be the reverse of going through a drive through, where they give you your fast food through your window.
-In many restaurants, the tables have a button you can press to call over the waiter/waitress if you need something. You can press this button any number of times, and every time the servers will always be just as fast, helpful and kind as the previous button press. I really wish the states were like this.
-To this day, not a single Korean person has pronounced my name correctly. Literally no one. Usually, my name is pronounced “Anj-roo”. Korean people have trouble pronouncing the “dr” combination though. Instead, they pronounce both a “d” sound and an “r” sound in succession, as opposed to more of a “j” sound. The result: I’m constantly referred to as “An-duh-roo”.
-Professional video gaming is huge here in Korea. The best teams/players are celebrities and known by many young people. Just like any other popular sport in the states, you can watch professional e-gaming on national television and thousands of people will go to watch teams compete. League of Legends is currently the most popular game (played on the computer) and the 2014 championship awarded one million dollars to the winning team of four players. If you go to any city in Korea (even as small as Mokpo) you will find “PC Bangs” all over the place. These are places where many young people gather to play their favorite online games. Video game addiction is a real problem, and there are curfews in place to prevent young people from playing video games at certain times.
-Not many Korean people know how to swim. For the ones that do know how to “swim” though, there is a catch: they have no idea what treading water is or how to do it! When I ask Koreans about this, some people simply don’t include treading water in the definition of swimming while others literally have no clue what it means to keep yourself afloat when your feet can’t touch the bottom. The reason for this is that hardly any swimming pools in Korea have a deep end- any Koreans that learned how to swim learned to do so in shallow water! When people go to the beach, they rarely go into deep water, and if they do, they’re always in floating tubes.
-There are hardly any houses here- pretty much everyone lives in an apartment (quality varies).
-There is a slightly noticeable haze of air pollution in most cities in Korea. Nothing too detrimental to one's health though. Mokpo's air is obviously cleaner than Seoul's due to the size of the city. Apparently the pollution can be worst during springtime when the "yellow dust" blows in from China (many cities in China have extremely hazardous air pollution). At that point I've heard it's good to invest in a decent breathing mask. I think we take clean air for granted in the states.
Appearance-based culture
-Some of the most famous people in Korea are Korean pop stars (K-pop stars). These are not like celebrities in the states though. Many are multi-talented. They sing, dance, act- you name it. The K-pop industry is composed of mostly groups of all-male or all-female singers (like the Backstreet Boys or Spice Girls). In the US, celebrities tend to be more specialized to only singing or only acting, and there are more individual celebrities rather than celebrity groups. The scariest part? These pop stars are practically created by the companies that financially own them. They are sought out at a very young age (pre-teen or early teen) and are trained intensively for years until they debut anywhere from age 17-22. All of them will get numerous plastic surgery operations throughout their careers in order to fit the Korean beauty standard- it’s simply a necessity if a group wants any chance at hitting it big. If you look at before and after pictures of these stars, you’ll see what I mean. Some of these people have completely transformed their faces. Side note: when people go to plastic surgery clinics, instead of saying something like “I want larger eyes” or “I want a smaller nose”, people say things like “I want to look like Yoona”, “I want Taeyang’s nose”, or “I want Suzy’s eyes” (these are all famous kpop stars). You simply flip through a catalog and pick out what you want to look like. Also, it is not uncommon for parents to pay for their child’s plastic surgery as part of a high school graduation present.
-Many people here know their blood type, and my fourth grade students were amazed when I didn’t know mine. Similar to a horoscope, there are beliefs that certain blood types have certain personalities.
-Some Korean women use brown or darker colored makeup “pencils” to thicken their eyebrows- they actually draw over their eyebrows in an attempt to make them appear to be more full of hair or longer. Korean women don’t have thick eyebrows to begin with, so it can sometimes look like a person took a crayon to their face and just decided to draw eyebrows. Kinda bizarre if you ask me.
-In the US, we tend to value having tan skin. Here, white and fair skin is valued. Tan is considered bad/dirty, and many Korean people will go to great lengths to whiten their skin if it is tan (many are naturally tan) as well as get spots/freckles removed from the face. It is not uncommon to see people practically wearing what I call a “makeup face mask”- as in their face is covered in white-ish makeup but the rest of their skin is just their natural color- thus creating a two tone look between the face and neck which looks a little ridiculous in my opinion. In relation to this, people will often wear hats, jackets, pants, face masks, sun umbrellas, or even hold up a piece of paper- all to protect their skin from damage from the sun (regardless of temperature, of course).
-Apparently Korean people do not have long eyelashes compared to foreigners. Somewhere out there in cyberspace there is a video of a pack of third grade girls marveling at the length of my eyelashes.
-I'm not going to lie- appearances here play a major role in how a person is treated and viewed in Korean society. I still receive comments almost every day about my appearance. I've also heard that status plays a major role as well (slightly tougher for me to observe since I'm a foreigner). Do I think this emphasis on status and appearance is a good thing? Of course not- but I definitely do not look down on Korean culture because of this nor do I let this bring down my experience here. I want to appreciate my time here as much as possible, have fun, learn, and be grateful for where I am and what I'm doing.
Safety
-Korea is an extremely safe country, much more so than the US. Here, a girl can walk around pretty much anywhere at any time of night and not feel the slightest worry of being in danger- whether in a city or smaller town. Crime here is very low and there is a level of trust between strangers that people will act in a moral way. People leave their cars running all the time (with nobody in the car), leave mopeds running on the sidewalk, leave bikes unlocked, and if you leave your wallet or phone somewhere in a public place, there’s a good chance it will still be there the next day.
-Hardly any of the police officers have guns and there is a much lower police presence here than in the states. As I’ve said before, this country is about harmony and not creating disruption- people here are generally better behaved than Americans.
Education
Lots to say about the education system in Korea. I'll save this for the next blog post as I haven't really organized any of my thoughts on this yet. It will surely provide for an interesting read though.
Overall
If you've made it this far, thanks for reading. I probably won't post again for at least another month- maybe longer, I don't know. I think my next post will be more a little more personal rather than simply talking about initial cultural observations, differences, etc. I'll try to make it as interesting and valuable to the readers as possible. Thank you to my friends, family, and anyone who has helped me in life. I love you all.
Andrew
I was able to get some of the photos from my phone uploaded onto the computer, so some of these are a little older. Also starting to notice that I wear a lot of the same clothes.